There has heretofore been known an electrostatic coating apparatus including a rotary atomizing head that rotates to atomize a coating material and configured to electrostatically coat an object to be coated such as a vehicle body. Such apparatus is arranged to drivingly rotate the rotary atomizing head applied with electrostatic high voltage, atomizing a fluid coating material supplied to this rotary atomizing head into fine particles by centrifugal force while electrically charging the fine coating particles with the electrostatic high voltage applied to the rotary atomizing head, thus ejecting out the particles. In general, electrostatic coating is performed in such a manner of setting an object to be coated to a positive electrode and an electrostatic coating apparatus to a negative electrode, thereby forming an electrostatic field therebetween, and attracting an atomized coating material negatively charged to the object by electrostatic force.
The above electrostatic coating apparatus is disclosed in for example Patent Literature 1. The electrostatic coating apparatus of Patent Literature 1 employs an electric motor as a driving source for driving the rotary atomizing head to rotate. The use of the electric motor can provide improved control response related to rise time and fall time, thus controlling the number of revolutions of the rotary atomizing head to a desired number in a short time (e.g., in about 0.5 seconds). Accordingly, coating can be performed more efficiently than the case using an air motor. The motor can attain a stable number of revolutions, leading to improved coating quality.
Citation List
Patent Literature
Patent Literature 1: JP2007-98382 A